A narrative history of the Burgess Gang and their greatest crime In the winter of 1866 New Zealands most notorious bushranger, Richard Burgess, knelt at a small desk in his Nelson prison cell, took up his quill pen and began to write.

"Armed robbery, murder, lies, treachery, "confession", and a legal tangle that ended in a sensational trial followed by three executions : these are some of the chief ingredients in this grim account of a callous crime committed on the New Zealand goldfields in 1866. This is also an unusual study of the mental make-up of the four lying, brutal Londoners who were responsible for the crime ... Frank Clune traces the lives of the four criminals and shows what influences played an important part in shaping their twisted lives: there were the crowded Thames-side slums created by the Industrial Revolution ... the laws designed to punish rather than to reform ; the rotten prison hulks ; the transportation system ; and the mental cruelty of life in the prisons of the day."--Inside front cover.

Until 1994, the world knew Anne Perry as the writer of bestselling crime fiction at the peak of her writing career. But following the release of Peter Jackson’s film Heavenly Creatures, about the sensational 1954 Parker-Hulme murders, came the shocking revelation that Anne Perry began life as Juliet Hulme, the teenager jointly convicted of murdering her friend’s mother. Life would never be the same for Perry. That a convicted murderer had gone on to become a celebrated crime writer with worldwide sales of over 25 million books was tantalizing enough. But with careful analysis of her writing reveals that these were more than simple crime stories; spiritual and philosophical complexities thread their way through Anne Perry’s works. Was Perry, in fact, revealing more about herself in the characters she was creating? Acclaimed biographer Joanne Drayton takes on the challenge of exploring Perry’s writing to uncover her world view and compulsion to write. The famously private Perry agreed to be comprehensively interviewed for the book and has allowed Drayton unparalleled access to her friends, relatives, colleagues and archives.

In 1895 Minnie Dean became the only woman hanged as a criminal in New Zealand. Her crime was child murder. The author works through the labyrinth of myths and legends to the real Minnie Dean and raises some disturbing questions.